A Fable for Critics (Masterplots II: Poetry Series)
At a glance:
- Author: James Russell Lowell
- First Published: 1848
- Type of Work: Satire
- Genres: Satire, Poetry
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Authors or writers, Nineteenth century, Literature, Poetry or poets, Writing, Criticism, Gods or goddesses, Romanticism, Transcendentalism
The Poem
A Fable for Critics is a satire in rhyming couplets. A thorough, if lighthearted, assault on the nineteenth century American literary scene, it takes special aim at those authors whose reputations rivaled James Russell Lowell’s own. Ironically, Lowell is not as highly regarded now as many of the writers he chose to satirize.
Though it is not great poetry, A Fable for Critics has endured because it contains witty, sometimes surprisingly incisive, thumbnail sketches of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Edgar Allan Poe,...
[The entire page is 1783 words long]
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